Crow’s Row (40 page)

“Someone will contact you with the funeral details,” he said, as he placed the money on the table. “Make sure some of this goes to getting food for those kids.” He walked over to me and gently pulled my chair out to help me up. As we exited the kitchen, I saw Cameron’s mother snatch the money from the table and stuff it down her shirt.

Neither one of us spoke in the car. Cameron’s eyes stared vacantly at the road as we sped down the street. We passed a street light, and, instead of turning on the road that we had come in through, Cameron kept driving and turned down a narrow laneway instead. There was barely an inch between the car’s side mirrors and the warehouse walls that flanked the laneway. He continued to drive dangerously fast until we got to the end, where the string of warehouses stopped and the lane opened up into a makeshift pier of gravel and rocks overlooking the Callister River.

Cameron unfastened his seatbelt and dashed out of the car. He stuck his hands in his pockets and stiffly leaned against the hood. I stepped out, climbed on the hood and wrapped my arms around him. His body was rigid, and he was breathing short angry breaths. When I pulled in closer, I felt his muscles slowly relax again.

“I used to come here a lot when I was a kid and needed to get away from my mom,” he told me.

I glanced around. We were in the bay of a commercial part of the river. Factories and smoke stacks bordered the shores and large barges carrying steel and crates floated back and forth across the harbor. A dead fish floated on the mud-brown water by the rocks.

“It’s lovely,” I remarked.

He chuckled. “I didn’t have much to work with back then.” He turned around to face me.

“So, you met my mother,” he said bitterly, “What did you think?”

I smiled sheepishly. “She’s lovely too, Cammy.”

He shuddered. “Please don’t ever call me that. I hate it.”

I leaned in and kissed him lightly, so as to not frighten him away.

We lay on the hood of the car and listened to the steam whistles blowing by the other shore. I thought about Rocco and finally understood why he had been so desperate to make a life away from his mother. Another thought occurred to me, and I turned to Cameron.

“That night, when those men came in, Norestrom kept asking Rocco where I was. They were looking for me.”

“Uh-huh,” Cameron replied cautiously.

“This wasn’t the first time that I had met him,” I confessed.

Cameron’s interest was piqued. “Who? Norestrom?”

I nodded and told him about the day Norestrom joined me at the picnic table on school grounds. Cameron was furious and walked to the edge of the water, swearing under his breath.

“I need you to tell me,” I pleaded, “did Rocco get killed because of me?”

“He didn’t get killed because of you. Rocco got killed because of one man’s greed.”

“I don’t understand what that has to do with me,” I said.

He sat on the hood and pulled on my legs, sliding me closer to him. “Before your brother and I started the business, a guy named Shield already had the power over almost all of the underground market. He controlled shipments, sales, business dealings, and all of the money that came with it. He had connections everywhere, and the gang leaders let him control everything because they were afraid of him and his connections. When your brother, Spider, and I came in and started making contacts with the gang leaders, all of them started to join forces with us instead. Even though Bill was a pretty smooth negotiator, the gang leaders didn’t need much convincing—none of them trusted Shield, and they had been looking for a way out. The business thrived under our management. The gang leaders were happy; and Shield lost everything but the small business he ran from his own turf. He tried to threaten us and the other leaders with his connections, but with all of the leaders peacefully united, there was nothing that Shield could do.”

Although it was hard for me to imagine my brother being anything else but a big goof, I still didn’t understand. “What does this have to do with me?”

“Shield feels that we stole the business from him and that we should have to pay him for that. After Bill died, he appealed to the leaders, asking that Bill’s money be given to him. The leaders just laughed in his face. Now Shield is coming after you for that money.”

“I don’t have any money, Cameron. My parents stopped sending me money after they got sick of me sending it back to them.”

Cameron raised his eyebrows. “I never understood that. Why do you choose to make life harder on yourself when your parents’ money opens doors for you that are closed to the rest of the world? You could do anything you want with their money to support you.”

“I can do anything I want with my parents’ money, so long as what I choose to do is what they want me to do,” I grumbled. Cameron looked confused. I shook my head, flustered. “It’s complicated. Don’t change the subject. Point is, I have no money, and this Shield guy is wasting his time.”

“Actually, you do. You have Bill’s inheritance, which is pretty generous, I might add.”

“I think I would have remembered if Bill had left me anything. He didn’t.”

“Yes, he did,” Cameron argued as he reached his hand over and slid it down the middle of my chest. I was frozen in place. He pulled his hand out, with the angel pendant that my brother had given me clasped between two fingers.

I laughed, shaking off some of the nervousness that lingered after his touch. “I hate to break this to you, Cameron, but that thing is worth a few hundred dollars at best. I don’t think Shield will be satisfied if I pawn this and give him the money.”

“Look more closely,” he urged, “What do you see?”

I humored him and looked down. There was nothing unusual about it. It was beautiful to me. An angel standing on a pedestal with a pink gem in the middle. I came up shrugging.

“Look closer.” He held the pendant upside down so that the pedestal faced me.

“Shiny silver and product codes.”

“They’re not product codes, they’re bank account numbers. Bill set up offshore bank accounts in the Caymen Islands for you before he died, with another promise from me to move all his money into them if something ever happened to him. I kept that promise too,” he said, winking.

For the first time, I realized that the numbers meant something, but that still didn’t explain everything. Last time I had checked in the mirror, I didn’t look all that threatening. “Why didn’t this Shield person just send one of his dumb soldiers to come grab the necklace from me?”

“Because they have no idea that the information they’re looking for has been hanging around your neck for years, and, until they saw me with you, they had no idea you even had the money. They must have assumed that Carly, Spider, and I had kept it for ourselves.”

“What does seeing you with me have anything to do with it?”

“I think Shield’s guys had been following me around for a while. Someone must have tipped them off that I was spending a lot of time in the projects when I had no business to conduct there,” he said smiling at me. “When Meatball hunted you down … and we officially met, I freaked out because I was afraid that they would figure out who you were. In hindsight, if I had left you alone and not gone back again, I don’t think they would have known anything was up other than my stupid dog attacking some girl.” He held my eyes. “But I really hated to see you so upset with me that day, and Meatball did break your ancient Walkman … I just couldn’t leave it alone. I had to go back and fix it.”

“I’m glad you did,” I said.

He smiled a tight smile. “Well, I shouldn’t have, because the second time we met, I confirmed their suspicion that something was up. Shield had sent one of his top guys to back up the spotter’s story. When I saw him running past us in the projects, I knew the jig was up.”

Things suddenly started to make sense. “The runner? The one from the cemetery?”

He nodded somberly. “He’s the worst of his kind. He wouldn’t have just kidnapped you—he would have done a lot more nastier things to you before he took you back to Shield. When I heard him say in the cemetery what he had planned to do to you, it drove me over the edge … I completely lost it.”

I remembered that night in the cemetery and the uncontrollable rage on Cameron’s face as he shot the man repeatedly.

“Shield must have sent Norestrom to try to get information on you,” he reasoned.

“How is Norestrom related to Shield?”

“Norsetrom is Shield’s right-hand man, kind of like Spider is mine.”

“But I didn’t tell Norestrom anything.”

He smiled reassuringly. “I think they already suspected who you might be because of your hair. I guess someone must have told them that Bill had a little sister with flaming red hair.” I would have normally been slightly offended with that comment, but Cameron had a loving smile on his face, so I let him get away with it—this time. “That’s why they planted a trap to see if it was really you. But I didn’t catch it on time.”

“A trap?” I didn’t remember falling into a leaf-covered hole or getting caught in any flying nets.

“We normally paid some local gang kid to keep Bill’s gravesite clean,” he explained. “But the bastards threw garbage around Bill’s grave right before you came through. Of course, you couldn’t resist cleaning up the mess, could you?” he teased. “When you stopped, they knew without a doubt who you were, and we had to stop Shield’s man from coming after you. Spider and I grabbed him just as he was running out of the cemetery after you.”

“Did Spider know who I was?”

“He knew that Bill had a little sister, but that’s it.” Cameron passed his fingers through his hair. “Believe me, it wasn’t a pretty conversation when I had to admit to him that I’d been secretly watching over you and that, because of that, we would have to kill one of Shield’s top guys, possibly starting an all-out gang war.”

“You must have gotten in a lot of trouble because of me,” I mused guiltily.

He nodded. “We had to enlist one of the local gang leaders because leaders aren’t allowed to hunt on each other’s turf without permission. But, for the most part, I tried to keep everything as quiet as possible so that no one would know about you. That’s why I brought Rocco along to keep watch, and, well, you know how that turned out.” He smiled with pain at the memory his little brother. “When we got back to the farm, I held an emergency meeting with all the leaders and gave them my version of events before Shield got to them. I let them vote on my fate. They all hate Shield, so I got a unanimous vote of support right away.”

I turned to him. “What was your version, exactly?”

He smiled slyly. “Strictly what they needed to know—that Shield was still trying to go after the money, even after he was told by all the leaders that it didn’t belong to him, and that the financial controller of Bill’s estate had been targeted for kill.”

The memory of the day that I had heard Cameron coldly talk to Manny about me in his office resurfaced. “And that you had taken care of the insignificant girl who had witnessed everything,” I added. I couldn’t hide the hurt in my voice.

Cameron cupped my face in his hands. “Emmy, if I told them the truth about my feelings for you, the word would get out really quickly, and you would become a target—not just because of your money but because they would know they could control me if they had you.”

He reassuringly pressed his lips against mine—but then he stopped himself and pulled away.

We went to grab lunch at a small diner that Cameron knew about. Then we made our way back to the cabin where Meatball was waiting for us, his fur still wet from a recent swim. Cameron convinced me to join him for a swim in the pond. Although I didn’t enjoy getting the slimy lily pads stuck between my toes, being alone in the water with Cameron was well worth all the ickyness of the weeds.

When the sun went down, we crawled into bed, and I looked for a distraction. What I found surprised me.

“Why can’t you just kill Shield?” I asked him, before I realized that I had just suggested that someone get killed.

Cameron wasn’t shocked by my question. “I wish I could just get rid of him that easily, but he’s got too many connections. When someone like that goes missing or turns up dead, people start asking questions and pry into our stuff. Anyway, any decision like that needs to be made by all the leaders, not just me. They would never risk attention from the Feds just so that I can protect the girl that I love.”

His voice trailed off and he fell asleep.

 Chapter Twenty-Three:
 Normal?

Rocco’s face came back to haunt my dreams. I woke up, but there were no tears or cold sweats this time—just a great sense of loss. The room was almost completely dark, with the only light coming from the moonlight that shone through the small cottage windows. I knew that Cameron was still asleep—his heavy breathing was tickling the back of my neck. I spun around without making a noise to make sure that he was really there, and not just something else that my ailing mind had made up.

He was definitely still there.

I watched him for a while and tried to breathe as quietly as possible. I was afraid of waking him up. This was the only time that I could look at him as much as I wanted to without having to look away, embarrassed when he discovered me. I watched his stomach heave up and down, his fists still clenched, readied while he slept.